Classic Films

He was the greatest romantic singer of the twentieth century.

Small wonder, then, that my wife and I had our biggest fight to his music.

One rainy afternoon, back when we were just dating, I entered the car she was driving and informed her that it was all over. It wasn't of course but I desperately wanted a specific reaction, namely, a "don't do this to me...I love you...I can't bear to be without you."

I was looking for her to violate her stalwart character in the most dramatic and inconceivable way possible.

This was something she had never done - not when her parents brought her to the brink of vulnerability with the Greek drama familiar to so many families, not when her troubled sibling had asked her to serve as his human shield, not when school or work tried to cripple her with dire commitment.

So if she did it for me, just me, I would truly know that she loved me.

Surely Frank Sinatra, egging her on through the stereo, would inspire her to action. Frank, half tough guy, half sentimentalist, like her. He had overcome the fickleness of show business, had built palaces in the desert, had elected a president. A man of such milestones, of such persuasion, could move one even such as she.

'"Fine," she replied fliply. "It's over."

I don't know which it was that was filling the sudden silence: the singular pounding of the rain against the windshield or the pounding of my disappointed heart against my chest. Where had Frank disappeared to? Where was his emphatic purr, not long ago filling the entire car?

The tape, like our relationship, had ended unexpectedly.

Frank could sing like he did because he was no stranger to heartache. He had company now, another fallen romantic made hard by reality.